president obama's approval rating is over 50%, it's at 52%. not bad. but not a real spike as sometimes you get with a re-elected president who benefits from the absence of bad feeling once the election is over. he's doing a little better, but he only moves in a narrow band. republicans or the congress, rather, is doing much, much worse. you see the approval rating for congress. it's only 14%. 81% disapprove of congress. that is epically bad and it shows the president has a bit of a strength in hand as he goes into the budget talks. so does this final number that i want to run through, which is if the budget talk fails, the debt limit is not raised and if there are consequences for the united states not meeting its obligations, who would you blame? 45% say they would blame republicans in congress. only 33% say they would blame pb and democrats. the bully pull pit has some value. democrats have a better image with the american people than republicans do. but nobody has a great image right now. and when we asked people, joe, the recent budget talks in was